


Where the Wind Blows

by littleoptimistme



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Bendemption, Body Sharing, F/M, Gen, Jeckle and Hyde sort of situation, Kind of a fixit, Post-Canon Fix-It, Rey - Freeform, Star Wars - Freeform, ben deserves better, ben survives, kind of, not really focusing on reylo, rise of the skywalker
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:21:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21943537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleoptimistme/pseuds/littleoptimistme
Summary: “I’ve never seen anything like it! A force dyad sharing the same life force, switching back and forth between two physical forms!” Maz leaned a little too close to her.“Alright,” said Rey, “how do we stop it?”“Stop it! Ha! There is no ‘stop it’. I very much doubt anything in the universe could separate you and Ben Solo now.”
Relationships: Kylo Ren & Rey, Kylo Ren/Rey
Comments: 6
Kudos: 64





	1. Chapter 1

Of course she loved him. She loved him like the wind loves the sky and the fire loves the hearth and the mountains love the rain. They were two parts of a whole. Two sides of a coin. Light and dark. Black and white. Good and evil. Rey and Ren. If you’d asked her a week ago, she would have confidently said she was the light counterpart.

And yet, there he was, looking down at her, terrified.

Just minutes before, it seemed like a lifetime, she stood with her saber raised over her head, ready to end the creature that dared tell her she was anything other than what she wanted, no,  _ needed  _ to be. If she killed Palpatine, she could stop the invasion and save her friends. She could end the stain of the Sith on the universe forever. She was strong enough! She was good enough!

_ Not alone,  _ said a voice, deep in her, not unkindly. He didn’t speak in words. It was more of a feeling, creeping through the back of her mind. Usually it was cold and harsh and frightening, like having the back of her head pulled open and the wind whistling by, and even thought she was used to it, it didn’t make it any less uncomfortable. He didn’t feel like that this time. He wasn’t gentle, he couldn’t be in a situation like this, but his thoughts were bright, cool, clean water, so different from the bubbling heat of rage that usually coated each thought. He’d made his decision and he was coming here to die. Kylo Ren was a person of the past. She knew this with more clarity than anything else.  _ You won’t survive the darkness,  _ he thought. 

_ You did _ .

He didn’t reply with anything that amounted to more than a bittersweet illease.  _ Not in time _ , that illease said.  _ Not while it still counted. _

Regardless, his light was enough to snap her out of it. She let her saber drop from her hand behind her head into Kylo’s. Ben’s.

If  _ Kylo Ren _ could die in the light, then by God, so could she.

When it was finished, Ben held her, and she could see the fighters in the sky above them. They won.

It was finally over.

And here he was, Ben, not Kylo.

There were only so many ways a human could express the feelings inside her. She kissed him because she loved him, she did. He was home, sitting there in the light from a broken ceiling with her. She could feel what he felt and see what he saw as easily as if he was her. Ben was dying for her.

That thought stopped her in her tracks.

Dying?

Ben smiled both for her benefit and because how could he not? He’d thought he was incapable of love, true, selfless, quiet love, because what was love but selflessness? A Sith couldn’t think about anything but themselves, wrapped up in a torrent of black, hazy power that came with the dark side.

As Ben’s life force flowed into Rey, leaving him an empty husk, he smiled. It wasn’t romance, not really, and it didn’t need to be. If this was a fairytale, maybe Rey would have cried over his body. Maybe her tears would bring him back to life, and they’d live happily ever after. But Rey didn’t cry. She sat curled up on the floor next to his empty clothes once he faded away. She stared up at the flaming sky. Ben had to die. There wasn’t enough life force to go around. It was an act of ultimate selflessness. And it would be selfish of her to deny him that right. It still hurt. But she was glad too. Maybe now he would finally be at peace.

Rey didn’t know what this would mean. Would the dark side be gone forever? How could the Force stay balanced without the two of them? Somehow it must still be okay, because she didn’t feel the awful sickness she felt when the Force lurched too far to one side or the other. If Ben wasn’t dark, and neither was she, how could balance remain? She was the only Jedi left.

Perhaps there’s no need for the dark side, she thought, watching the ships above her fall, burning to the ground. The planet shook with each landing, sending vibrations through her lungs. She didn’t know enough. She didn’t have a teacher any more. This thought brought tears to her eyes, prickling her nose. Leia was gone. What was she going to do without her?`

Rey must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she remembered, she was looking up at a purple sky filled with a million stars and the shadows around the collapsed room were deep and empty and all of the ships were gone. Every bone in her body ached. She sat up and looked at the clothes lying next to her. There was still a hole in his shirt, burned from when she’d stabbed him. Where did his lightsaber end up, she wondered?

He’d thrown it into the sea, she knew, a second later. She blinked, frowned, and shook her head. She didn’t have the energy to question it. He was so dramatic. It sounded like something he would do. No one would need it now, of course.

Her hands moved without thought. She rolled the clothes up into a neat bundle and stuck them into the back of her belt. Rey’s steps echoed around the dusty room. She took one last look at setting of both the best and worst moments of her life, and then she left it behind.

Ben’s ship sat next to hers and she considered the two of them for half a moment before jogging across the pebble beach to Luke’s ship. She could hardly leave it in this cursed place. Hoping inside, she shut the hood, pulled the helmet over her head, and clicked a few buttons on. The ship whirled to life. To think, just a few years ago, she was sitting in the sand at the foot of an AT-AT with a too large helmet just like this on her head. This one fit.

She set Ben’s bundle of clothes next to her and left the planet behind. She didn’t look back.

Rey’s next few weeks were filled with color and light and smiling, pats on the back, sleep, good food, her friends, and the bittersweet lack of those who were no longer with them. Leia’s funeral was supposed to be a small, private affair, like she would have liked, but somehow, word spread about it and several hundred people showed up to pay their respects. In the end, it couldn’t be helped.

Afterword, Rey found herself alone for the first time in a long time. It was quiet in the makeshift wooden room she’d made her home in the jungles of Yavin 4. Half in imbedded in a tree, half built from various metal scraps, the room was nothing to look at, but Rey had lived in far worse places. In fact, she liked it. Besides, the door locked. She’d never lived in a room where the door locked from the inside. What more did a person need?

She sat down on her cot and her heel knocked on the metal box she’d stowed beneath it. For a long moment, she didn’t reach for it. Instead, she pressed the bases of her palms into her eyes. She was… okay. Not happy, exactly, even though she should be, she reasoned, but she didn’t feel horrible either. There was an emptiness in her. It was like she’d had a limb removed. She couldn’t quite explain it to anyone without sounding crazy.

They would think her grateful to finally be rid of him. And she was glad to be rid of  _ Kylo _ . Kylo died on that spaceship graveyard, surrounded by sea salt and waves. He died at the voice of his mother, whispering his name one last time. And Rey had gotten to see Ben for all of less than an hour. She didn’t even know him. She couldn’t. It wasn’t fair. But Rey wished she could have. She was far from grateful to see Ben go.

There was a tug in her mind, pushing her attention back to the boxes. She knew what she needed to do. It was time. She’d finished her own saber and she didn’t need them anymore. Picking it up, Rey unlocked the box on her knees. Luke and Leia’s lightsaber’s lay within. She stood with them in hand, closed the box, and then hesitated. This was a good a time as any. Opening it again, she took Ben’s clothes out from the bottom.

Outside, Finn caught her attention as she went past, light on her feet. She’d hoped to slip away unnoticed, but it was practically impossible lately. Of all people, Finn was the best option, she supposed. He left a group of people talking and eating something unfamiliar around a fire once he saw her.

“Going somewhere?” he finished off a bite of his food.

She nodded. She unwrapped the cloth around the sabers slightly. “I thought…” She didn’t know exactly what she was thinking, but that was alright. “They’d want to be home.”

Finn’s eyes softened. “I’ll come with you.”

“No.” She wrapped them up again. “I’ll only be gone for a day, two at most.” Besides, she felt she needed to do this alone.

Finn searched her face. And then to her surprise, he nodded. He was getting more intuitive every day. At some point they were going to have to talk about that. But not today. “Don’t be stupid,” he said.

“Can’t promise that.” She smiled and then she left him behind.

The trip to Tatooine was notable only in its unusual ease. It had been so long since she’d come and gone anywhere without being shot at. Ben’s clothes lay near Luke and Leia’s bundle.

She didn’t know why she’d kept the clothes, really. He certainly wasn’t attached to them. But it wasn’t like there was a body to bury or burn. She would bury the clothes. No one else was going to bother. They hadn’t even asked about him yet. They must assume he’d died on one of the ships. If she didn’t give him a grave, everyone would forget about him entirely.

It was up to her to tell his story, she supposed. She’d have to give a report of everything that happened eventually. She was surprised they hadn’t asked already. She’d given a vague breakdown, and as of yet, no one bothered her for more details. Their hesitation wouldn't last long. Once the funerals were wrapped up, it would be time to start writing history again.

Where would he even want to be buried? His mother’s planet was gone. So was the planet he’d been raised on. Perhaps Luke’s island?

She considered the idea for a moment before a wave of something almost like a scoff flashed through her. It was so quick she wondered if she’d even felt it. No, he wouldn’t want to be buried there.

By the time she landed on Tatooine, she still hadn’t decided. Tatooine was so familiar to her home planet it ached. She didn’t exactly miss her home. She knew no one and no one knew her. But there was something about returning to a familiar place that she found comforting, like slipping on a well-worn pair of shoes. She bartered for a skimmer, nearly gave an aspiring pickpocket a heart attack, ended up giving the kid a coin anyway because she felt bad, and blasted off into the dunes.

The suns would be setting soon and she pressed the skimmer faster. Rey didn’t know where she was going, but she didn’t try to figure it out. The Force would get her there. Her only concern was the blood red suns as they sank closer to the horizon. On her planet, red suns usually signaled an oncoming sand storm. She’d have to be under cover hopefully before nightfall.

The tug kept her going until she reached a tiny, sand filled outpost dug into the ground. This was the place, she knew. Slowing the skimmer, Rey stopped at the edge of the hole, dismounted, and peered down. This is where Luke grew up, in no more glamourous a place than Rey. She liked that.

There was a piece of flat scrap metal lying by and she used it to slide down the hill of sand that had piled up to the top of the hole, probably from the last sandstorm, as she had done thousands of times before. At the bottom of the hill, she didn’t hurry to stand. She wanted to remember this place for both of the late Skywalkers. With this thought in mind, she went to one of the doors and pressed on the button next to it. She expected, at the most, some grinding gears. To her surprise, the door opened, loudly and not without protest, but it opened nonetheless. Inside, unfamiliar, and yet eerily familiar hallways branched out. The tug in the back of her mind grew stronger, not in any particular direction, but perhaps, in excitement. Luke was here with her. Of course he was.

She wandered the hallways, listening to the whispers from beyond the veil.  _ I broke my leg here. This is where my aunt used to keep her flute. This the the room I met Obi Wan in. _

Rey didn’t know exactly who Obi Wan Kenobi was, other than that he’d trained Luke, but Luke seemed to have fond memories of him.

Once she finished touring the house, Rey headed for the exit. It was only as she left that something made her pause. She turned back and looked carefully around the rounded, sand carved room. Something was wrong. For a long moment, she saw nothing. Everything was tidy and clean except for the floor, which was filled with footprints.

Rey blinked. That was it. This place should be covered in sand by now. And the footprints were not just her own.

Someone lived here. Cursing, Rey drew back and shut the door behind her. Thank goodness no one had been inside when she decided to take a little tour. She climbed out of the hole and considered her options. She couldn’t leave the lightsabers in the house as she’d intended if someone lived there. Scuffing the sand with her foot, she looked down at the ground. This spot would work well enough.

Setting the sabers down, she unwrapped them one last time before wrapping them up again.  _ Peace be with you, _ she thought, as she used the force to bury the weapons, deep, deep into the earth. No one would ever find them. After a long moment, Rey patted the sand in satisfaction and smoothed the sand over the spot. Her uncle would be happy with their choice.

Rey shook her head. That… wasn’t what she meant to think. Luke was not her uncle.

She was so deep in thought, she nearly missed the grouchy looking woman walking toward her, reins of a camel-like animal in hand.

“Ey!” the woman shouted.

Startled, Rey stood from her crouch and stumbled back a step.

“Who the darns do you think you are? What’s your name?”

Rey opened her mouth to respond, but a wave of hot pain suddenly flew through her mind. The Force rippled around her, twisting to accommodate for  _ something _ and it was hardly pleasant.

Distantly, Rey heard the woman still shouting at her. She tried to raise a hand, but she could barely keep her feet under her. The ringing in her ears grew louder and louder.

And then all at once, everything stopped.

Rey panted. She was still standing, she realized, head clutched to her stomach, but when she moved to straighten, the sand beneath her feet shifted and she fell backward into the outpost’s hole.

Rey yelped, reaching out toward the woman, who’d dropped the camel’s reigns and run toward her, but was too late. She tumbled down the hill of sand.

The world went black.

A moment later, Rey opened her eyes.

Only to blink blearily.

She was… not at the bottom of the hill.

She was in a dark, candle-lit room.

Rey jerked up and tried to move, only to realize her hands were cuffed behind her back. She frowned, looking down at herself. What was she wearing? Her heart thumped in her chest. How did she get here? Where was she? What was going on?   
Rey didn’t have any time to voice any of these questions, instead, she turned her head to find herself staring down the barrel of a rusted blaster. The woman who’d asked her name what felt like only a moment ago was behind it. She’d taken her tarpan off her head and let it hang around her neck. She was a tight-skinned woman with narrow lips and an even tighter bun. She clicked a button on the blaster.

“Alright, yer gonna tell me just what exactly is going on here or I’ll blow your brains out here and now, mark my words.”

Rey believed her. She swallowed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know what’s going on.”

“Where’d he go, huh? I turn my back for two parsecs!”

“What?”   
The woman’s lips drew back. “Don’t play stupid with me.”

Rey stilled. She needed to think. She needed to be calm or she wouldn’t be able to get out of this. However, the woman’s next words threw every chance of this out the window.

“Answer me! Where’s Ben?”


	2. Chapter 2

Ben slammed into sand and slid backward down a steep hill. The sky was violet. The sand was hot, the air stifling and dry. His head pounded like someone had taken a hammer to it.

What the hell was going on?

The moment he stopped sliding, Ben fumbled to his feet, only to get caught on something. A loose fabric? What was he wearing?

“Hey!” a rough female voice shouted. He whipped toward it. It came from beyond the rim of the hole he’d landed in. “I asked you a question!”

Ben didn’t know what that question could possibly be or if she was even talking to him. He threw his hand up automatically. He needed a way out. The woman shrieked and thumped into the sand a good twenty feet away. Ben ran, smacked open the door of what appeared to be an underground outpost and closed it behind him. He slipped down the hallway, shut himself in one of the rooms, a little, sandy bedroom, and pulled at something stuck in the unraveling tunic around his waist.

The something was a bundle of clothes. He undid the bundle. His… clothes?

He stared at the shirt and pants in his hands, for a moment completely uncomprehending. Why was he wearing this _thing_ instead of his clothes?

He stripped off the ruined tunic and hastily threw them on. He didn’t have any shoes, but he could manage that. Just in time. He managed to pull the shirt over his head when the front door opened with a jangle of grinding gears.

Great.

He smoothed down the shirt, backed up, and his hand ran over a hole in the front of the shirt.

A hole.

He blinked slowly and traced the hole with his finger.

Suddenly, the woman was not nearly as important.

Rey made that hole when she stabbed him. That was right. She’d stabbed him and healed him and he’d…

It came back piece by piece. His mother's voice. Throwing his lightsaber into the sea. Palpatine. Rey. The light. He didn’t know how heavy the dark side had been until he ripped it from his shoulders.

He should very much be dead right now. He suddenly felt nauseous.

The woman wasn’t attempting to be very quiet. She hollered and cocked a weapon and burst into the bedroom with her blaster raised. Ben wasn’t concerned. He had bigger worries. He flicked a finger.

Nothing happened.

“What gives you the right to just waltz into my _home_ like you own the place you-” She dropped the blaster slightly. “Who the rick-rack are you! What is this, national break-n-entering day? Get your hands up! Where’d the girl go?”

Ben pursed his lips and slowly lifted his hands. He waved one, reaching for the familiar flow in his mind. “This is fine,” he said.

The woman blinked. She tore her tarpan away from her face. “What kind of-”

Shit. He tried again. “Go about your business.”

“Not Bloody Likely!”

Ben didn’t panic. He didn’t panic until he tried yet a third time, this time to push her away from him. Nothing happened. It worked before! What was going on?

“The girl!”

Ben shook his head. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“You have any weapons?”

He did not.

Neither lowering her blaster nor looking away, she unclipped something from her belt.

Handcuffs.

She tossed them to him and they landed on the ground with a soft thump in finely sifted sand. “Put those on.”

No, he didn’t think he would do that. He would not be the prisoner of some meager scavenger.

She tightened her grip on the trigger and shot a blast at the ground to his left. “Don’t mess with me, buster!”

On second thought.

Slowly, Ben bent and picked up the handcuffs. Fine. He clicked it onto one wrist.

“Behind you.”

He crossed his arms behind him and clicked the rusty (although admittedly sturdy) handcuffs closed around his other wrist. As soon as he finished, the woman jumped forward and tightened them. Blaster in his face, she pushed him out the door and down a hallway.

It was strange. He frowned, looking the hallway up and down. Had he been here before?

She pushed him into a different room, this one larger and obviously occupied. The bedroom had been outfitted with a makeshift campfire stove, a cot with various blankets, along with some boxes of food and other mechanical parts Ben didn’t recognize. The woman was definitely a scavenger. See, there was a polarized compartmental equalizer in the corner that would fetch nearly a week’s worth of food. Did the woman know that? She had to. Rey would know.

Now that he thought about it, Ben was fairly certain _he_ did not have the faintest clue what a polarized compartmentalism equalizer did or how he knew what it was called.

Was he still connected to Rey? Was that why he was here?

The woman shoved him down into a corner. She took a chain from what must have been some sort of gear, looped it around the cuffs, and locked it around a metal pole imbedded in the wall beneath a small round window near the ceiling,

“I’d take you to Gurtaf right now if it wasn’t for the storm coming. Big strong boy like you will get me a nice set up.”

Ben’s eyes narrowed. From the floor, he traced the woman with his eyes as she unwrapped the tarpan completely from her head and sat down on her cot facing him. She busied herself pouring water into a horrible grey looking paste that she soon began to eat with a wooden spoon. She took a disinterested bite, eyes still steadily on her prisoner.

“Yer a real chatterbox.”

Ben said nothing. Instead he lifted his gaze to a spot just over her head and determined to stare at the swirls in the packed sand wall.

“Was that you or the girl then, that threw me like that?”

Ben has no reason to explain anything to her. He kept his gaze on the wall. “What planet is this?”

The woman raised an eyebrow. “I get a question, you get a question.”

He considered this. On one hand, she was his only source of information and until he figured out just what was blocking him from the force, he was at the mercy of her blaster. On the other, she wanted to sell him into slavery and he owed her nothing. Even he would never-

Well. No, he’d definitely participated in slavery.

He blinked. Gods, how did he think that was okay? _I didn’t,_ he thought. _But the darkness made it easy._

It was like the thought opened a floodgate. He didn’t know how to stop it. The dark side had been like a drug, pulling him deeper and deeper into a pit of tar that he somehow had convinced himself was freedom. He could still feel it, snaking in the back of his mind, waiting calmly for him to return.

He felt sick, suddenly too hot. He screwed his eyes shut and tried to think about _anything_ but the overwhelming wave of guilt which crashed over him all at once. There was absolutely nothing he could do to fix it.

Ben knew it would be bad if he gave up the darkness. He wouldn’t have the haze of anger and fear to block out guilt. But this? It was like his body had been turned to stone. He didn’t even know how many people he had killed. He hadn’t bothered to keep count.

He couldn’t think about it. It was going to kill him. Why the hell wasn't he dead? He should be dead.

Ben steadied himself and met the woman’s eyes. She hadn’t noticed the mental break down that was going on in front of her. Ben kept his face blank. He was shaking.

“It was me who threw you. What planet is this?” His mouth tasted like metal.

“What are you, one of those Jedi or something?”

“Or something. My question now.” He could only keep going. One problem at a time.

She slurped down a spoonful of the grey gunk (Ben was starving, he realized suddenly, but he could not imagine eating something like that). “Tatooine.”

Oh.

Oh, of course.

It clicked in his mind then. This was Luke’s childhood home. Ben had seen it in Luke’s memories years and years ago. The panic that threatened to engulf him pulled back slightly. How and why he was here were more difficult questions to answer.

“What are you doing in my house?”

“I got lost. I did not intend to end up here.” Not exactly a lie.

The woman narrowed her eyes.

His turn. “Do you usually sell lost travelers to slavery?”

“Usually.”

No help there, he supposed. At least she was honest. “I thought slavery was outlawed on Tatooine.”

She shrugged. “Officially, yes. Unofficially, not so much.” She paused. “Was that your question?”

“Can I ask another?”

She huffed. “Shit, fine.”

As they talked, the light from the little window above them dimmed. The wind whistled outside, and Ben guessed the storm would be here any minute. In the dimming light, the woman lit a candle on a hanging holder before raising an eyebrow in anticipation of his turn to ask a question.

“What did the girl look like?” he said.

This caught the woman off guard. She cocked her head. “Do you really not know her?”

“I don’t think you’ve grasped the concept of the question-answer process.”

She glared. “Thin, pretty thing. Brown hair pulled back. Looked like a local. Wearing a tunic, far as I recall.”

This came as no real surprise to Ben. In fact, it was the only explanation he could think of.

The girl was Rey of course.

But what was she doing here and why was _he_ here now? He quite vividly recalled dying. He didn’t remember anything after that, but certainly, he was dead. Maybe this was some sort of twisted afterlife, a purgatory for the morally irresponsible. He dismissed this idea as quickly as it came into his head.

“What’s your name, boy?”

Ben opened his mouth to respond, and the words stumbled slightly. Nervously. He felt… stupid taking up his birth given name again. It wasn’t as if he could just waltz back into the Solo family like nothing had happened.

He pressed the feeling away. Ben wasn’t a persona he could take on and off. It was who he was, whether he liked it or not. Solo on the other hand… He hadn’t decided on his feelings about the matter. It was difficult to convince the heart what the head knew. At least now he could think clearly.

“Ben,” he said.

“Ben what?”

“... Just Ben.”

She considered him and then nodded.

A pause.

Ah yes, he should return the favor. “And you?”

“Winfrey.”

He almost snorted. Gods, to think, he was being held captive by a _Winfrey_ of all people.

“You think that’s funny?”

Ben hummed and said nothing. He dropped his head back against the wall and shut his eyes. He was exhausted, although he couldn’t have said why. He let the subtle sounds of his captor fade into the background and his consciousness drift.

If Rey was here, surely he could speak to her?

He focused, looking for the familiar strand of light that shone so brightly in his mind this last year or so. She’d been a lifeline, the only source of calm in the absolute wreck that was his mind.

And yet he tried to drag her down with him, hadn’t he? He’d been so sure, if he could get her to follow him, then it would make it better somehow. If she could join him then surely it wasn’t all so bad.

Or something like that. His exact thought process was hazy. Unlike now. It was like cleaning the dust off of dirty windows and realizing you’ve been sitting in dusk before. He didn’t know how deeply Snoke (and by extension, Palpatine, he supposed) had influenced his thoughts, but he swore he’d never been able to be this calm… ever.

He searched deeper and further for Rey’s light. But there was something missing. The force, usually thrumming in his veins, barely whispered to him. He could feel it, but it was bulky and slippery in his grasp. This wasn’t an altogether unfamiliar feeling. When he was a child trying to meditate at Luke’s instructions, the force felt like this. Distant and frustrating. He hated mediation. He wanted to grab the reins and _pull._

He could not do so now if he tried.

And Rey was nowhere to be found. He opened his eyes.

The room was empty and the light had changed hue. The bowl sat empty on the cot. The door was open just slightly. It was dim in the little room and the wind screamed outside.

Ben didn’t know what a sandstorm was like really. He’d been on the edges of one once before, but never in the middle. He and his mom weren’t fond of sand so then tended to avoid planets where there was a surplus. He wondered what would happen if he just wandered away. He could let the sand cover him, wrap him in warmth and keep him still and quiet for awhile...

Rey had been caught in countless sandstorms. Yes, he was sure of that. And she would probably not like it if they were buried alive. He couldn’t leave until the storm stopped, but he would need to escape eventually. Slavery was not a preferable option.

Then again, what exactly was a preferable option? He was the former leader of the First Order. And as far as everyone knew, a murderous Sith Lord.

A dead, murderous Sith Lord.

What if he just went somewhere new? No one knew his face, not really. He could catch a ride to the outer rim and hide away. But what would be the point? To die alone and forgotten years from now?

It would be better than he deserved.

Rey didn’t deserve that, however. And he was fairly certain she was along for the ride. It was a tricky issue. Everything was tricky and vague and altogether overwhelming, and good god, he wasn’t strong enough to do this.

He tugged at the handcuffs. They were quite tight. If he could use the force none of this would be a problem. Could Rey use the force? Surely.

Now he just needed her to-

Even as the began to think of it, there was an intense pressure behind his eyes, and a twist in the force. He hissed and dropped his head.

Winfrey clattered in the other room. “The hell you doing in there?”

Too late. He couldn’t speak past the ringing in his ears.

He blinked, and sank into darkness

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Leave a review if you liked it! I’d love to know what you think!


End file.
